All posts by Pete Nadin
Below are all of Pete Nadin's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Who knows I could be the first Englishman in Derbyshire to morph into someone with a distict Irish accent !!
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Unless of course you are on certain benefits Steve, in which case this help and equipment for some older people service can be free. I seem to recall they indicated it would be free to even more people initially, but then changed their mind and the rules, moving the bar up so to speak. They were also very poor with their knowledge as to why relays only broadcast a limited number of channels (when I asked them), telling me quite incorrectly that it was due to poor reception or obstacles such as trees rather than the real reason which is that most relays only relay a limited number of MUXs compared with the main transmitters, with very few exceptions. I had to tell "them" that when I found out, and it came as a complete surprise to them. So beware.
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Just bought a new car today with the letters DAB on the car stereo display. Fantastic I thought - I pushed the button .... NOTHING !! Toyota charge an extra £600 for this item and it is not fitted as standard just FM & MW now (they have even removed LW, which was on my last Toyota car stereo - so no cricket, no Parliament, no Shipping Forecast apart from the 12:46am one on FM, no radio in large chunks of Scotland & Wales where LW is about all you can receive and no RTE Radio 1 on 252 either). As I have no intention of getting rid of my car for at least 5 years, I will be listening to silence after 2015. Unless you believe Feedback on BBC Radio 4 last week, which stated in last weeks programme 11.03.11 that although 20% of radio listening occurs in cars only 2% of UK cars have DAB, so the 2015 FM/AM switch off date is impossible, PHEW !!
And its bye bye to BBC World Service 648 next Sat 27 March sob sob !! So yet another bit of dead air on my trannies !!
At least my car battery won't use up as much juice. I'm also busy creating loads of radio CDs to play in the car from BBC i-player. Last week's Friday Afternoon Play "BLACK ROSES - The Killing of Sophie Lancaster" was brilliant, including poetry from the extremely tallented Simon Armitage. This will be my first speech based CD in the car. I can still hear RTE Radio 1 FM for about three minutes on 89.6 MHz FM on Matley Lane in Dukinfield, Tameside due to its height and it being just west of the Pennines with an uniterupted line of sight to the Irish transmitter wherever that is, must be quite powerful ? Having said that you can get BBC National Radio from England & Wales down the East Coast of EIRE.
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As Winter Hill uses Ch 62 I trust this means that the BBC Standard Freeview Multiplex will be on the move at some point. How much money do the government stand to make selling off these frequencies I seem to recall a figure of £22 billion for the mobile auction last time round which almost ruined BT and sent its share price tumbling from 1200 to 200 !! From where it has never recovered.
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Not a single aritcle in this weeks Radio Times about this change from BBC Radio 7 to Radio 4 Extra, apart from the name change in the listings pages. How bizarre for a BBC publication not to cover a significant change to one of its own radio stations. Not really living up to its name is it. Looking forward to AMBRIDGE EXTRA. I don't suppose the new station will be in STEREO on DAB unlike its predecessor ? That would be too much to hope for. Still hopefully it will continue in STEREO on Freeview, Freesat & on line & BBC i-player.
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The UK switch off will only affect 198 LW all other LW stations operate from outside the UK.
I guess it depends how bad the DAB gaps are as to whether DRM will take off or not. It may be the only way of serving remote areas post switchover.
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Will satellite work in cars though, doesn't the receiver need to be fixed with a reasonably directional dish. The Worldspace receivers had a bit of flexibility while they were able to pick up a service, which has now sadly closed making the sets a bit of a white elephant.
By the way Brian, after your previous insistance that the TODAY programme goes out only in MONO, I hope you were listening this morning when different sounds came out of the left and right speakers on FM at approx 07.45am to 07:50am, albeit an APRIL FOOL spoof story about 3D AUDIO RADIO.
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Saturday 5 March 2011 3:25PM
Is Ed Vaizey is keeping FM for both Local & National radio or just Local ?
Better static than nothing, as will be the case in the Manifold Valley, unless it gets its own brand new DAB transmitter, which considering its very low population is very doubtful. I guess there will be quite a few other such areas but only time will tell. Still there's always RTE Radio 1 which booms in on 252 kHz Long Wave ???